Skin Deep (17 page)

"Wyl," I called out. "John Beresford Tipton has sent me to make you a millionaire."

"Again?" Wyl's voice floated from the back of the store. "I'll have to buy a king-size bed. My mattress is absolutely
stuffed."

I headed for the main counter, but Wyl intercepted me. He can do that: he's the only man I ever met who can actually materialize. "Dear Simeon," he said. "How's Eleanor?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow. I'm having dinner with her tonight."

"But things are still . . ." He hesitated. "Fait accompli?" He gave his hand a small loose-wristed shake, a gesture that means "no way" all over the world.

"As far as she's concerned. I'm still working on it."

He patted my arm. "Faint heart ne'er won fair lady," he said.

"Yo," I said to aggravate him. "No guts, no glory. If you want it, go for it."

"You make her sound like a strike in bowling. Altogether too blue-collar. Nothing against the huddled masses, of course. God knows my heart is with them." It was, too. Wyl was a socialist from way back.

"Wyl," I said, "what have you done to your eyes?"

He closed them halfway. "You tell me."

"They're, um, different. Not that they don't look nice."

"Please. We both know they look like Joan Collins at four a.m. Not that
that
doesn't have something to recommend it."

"To whom?"

"To Dr. Alfred Nesbit, for one. He's the one who did it. At my urging, of course, and at considerable cost."

"You have a doctor doing your eyes?"

"Well, only once, silly. Who could afford one every day? They're tattooed."

"Tattooed? But that means—"

"Exactly. That I can't take them off. But I forgot. Of course, you don't know, do you? Mother died."

"Oh, Wyl," I said. "I'm sorry."

He patted my hand. "That's sweet of you. But it was a mercy, really. She'd got to the point where she thought she was still in Shaker Heights. She didn't even know she was old anymore. Not a bad way to go, really."

"So you had your eyes tattooed?"

"Certainly. No more reason to take them off every night. God, it was such a bother to put them on again. When I was younger I enjoyed it, all those hours in front of the mirror to look simply killing in case fate decided to deal one an ace out of the clear blue sky. After one reaches a certain age, though, one becomes satisfied with kings, and, if one wishes to avoid queens, one learns to settle for jacks or even the occasional ten, and the tens don't usually care if one's eyes are perfect. But
I
know, don't I? This way, they're always fine."

"Like having your hair starched."

He mused for a moment. "I hadn't thought of that, actually. Might make sleeping difficult."

"Wyl," I said. "Toby Vane."

"Oooh," he said. "That terrible television show. Which I watch religiously every week, of course. What about him?"

"I want everything you've got."

Wyl narrowed his eyes in an attempt to look shrewd. "For reading or for buying?"

"For buying. And I'll make you a deal. After I've finished with it, I'll give it back to you and you can sell it all over again, assuming anyone is dumb enough to want it."

"Why would you do that?"

"Why not? I'm not out to create a permanent collection. You don't have to bind the stuff."

"I have some lovely vinyl."

"Bind it to death, then, if it'll make it easier for you to sell when I'm through with it."

"You must have
some
expense account. Do you know him?"

I thought about it. "In a manner of speaking."

"Is it true what they say about him?"

"That depends on what they say about him, doesn't it?"

"That he beats up a girl every morning just to work up an appetite for breakfast."

"Something like that."

"Honey," Wyl said, "the poor lad obviously hasn't admitted something to himself. Do you think it's ever occurred to him that he might prefer boys?"

"That's an interesting idea. But I'm sure it hasn't."

"Just as well," Wyl said thoughtfully. "He'd probably wind up punching them, too."

"Have you got much on him?"

"Scads, and all of it recent, naturally. Not difficult to find. Do you really want to give it back after you read it?"

"Sure, but there's a catch."

"Goes without saying. You're going to dog-ear it or something."

"No. Because you're going to do it for me. Every page that's got anything to do with Toby."

"Dog-earing is barbaric. Haven't you got any respect for the printed word?"

"But you'll do it."

"No, I won't. No dog-earing, no paper clips. Tell you what. I'll use those cute little yellow sticky things. You can just peel them off as you go."

"Buy some extras," I said, "and save the receipts."

"Honey, no need. My whole
life
is arranged around stick-its. One entire wall of my kitchen is literally papered with them. I use them for taxes, inventory, shopping lists, reminders, phone messages, calendars, everything. I even used one on a cut finger once. And, do you know, I'm so much a creature of habit that I wrote 'Cut' on it before I put it on my finger? That reminds me, did I ever tell you about the time I saw Lee J. Cobb?"

"Lee J. Cobb? No, I don't think you did."

Wyl took a long breath. "In the market, of all places, actually doing his shopping. Of course this was some time ago, almost before there was smog. He had such a mean mouth, you could tell he'd suffered. There I was in the checkout line, reading
TV Guide,
it was so little in those days and Lucy was
always
on the cover, and I looked up when someone bumped my derriere with a shopping cart, and ohmygod it was Lee J. Cobb. I had this whole cart just piled with stuff—Mother always saved coupons, and I did my shopping for weeks at a time, more stuff than they put with the pharaoh into the Great Pyramid—and he only had some celery and a chicken breast, poor man must have been trying to lose weight, and I know how that is, so naturally I let him go first. He grunted at me."

"Grunted?"

"I knew it meant thanks. Well, I went home in an absolute daze and put everything away, labeling it first like I always do, but this was before stick-its, so I just wrote on the paper with a crayon, humming to myself and thinking about
Death of a Salesman
and that adorable Kevin McCarthy. And you know, about a week later when I was having some friends over for dinner, I went to the freezer to find the leg of lamb I'd bought that day, and when I pulled it out it had a great big LEE J. COBB written on it. Is it any wonder I'm in this business?"

"Everything on Toby," I said. "Okay?"

"I thought we'd already settled that."

"The stick-its are fine."

"Don't you ever use them? They'd be perfect for you, you could take notes on them. Come to think of it, I've never seen you take any notes. Sometimes I don't actually believe you're a detective."

"Let me use your phone, then. You can listen in, and then you'll know."

"Of course. You know where it is by now. Just write down the numbers of any toll calls on the stick-its next to the phone and put them on the wall. Listen, I think Dracula over there needs some help. Do you mind?"

"Not at all. But I thought you wanted to prove to yourself that I'm a private investigator."

"Honey, Draculas never take very long."

The phone was an old black number with a dial. It weighed about fifteen pounds. My first call was to Bernie Siegel, a professional graduate student who had abandoned his will to the siren call of UCLA and was there, apparently, for life. Bernie had more degrees than I did. He was the aging top gun of research, always waiting for some punk kid with thicker glasses to come along and prove he was faster with an index card.

He answered on the first ring; he was probably curled up next to the phone reading Heidegger or Swedenborg for a nice, relaxing afternoon.

"Bernie," I said, "fifteen dollars an hour."

"There are people I won't hurt, Simeon," he said. "Give me a minute and I'll think of some."

I gave him a minute. Then I gave him another one.

"Okay," he said. "Who is it?"

"Everybody in South Dakota named Sprunk. Only, you don't have to beat them up. You just have to get me their addresses and telephone numbers."

"That sounds more than fairly boring."

"That's why it's fifteen dollars an hour."

"How about North Dakota? They're the same except for a couple of letters."

Toby always said South Dakota. Would he have lied? After a moment, I realized that Toby probably couldn't spell a name for the Information operator without changing a few letters for fun. "Sure. Also the other states that border it."

"Canada borders it, too, if I have my geography right. No, I don't. But at least it borders North Dakota. Honest to Christ, why don't they just make it one big state and forget it?"

"This guy's not Canadian," I said with more assurance than I felt. "Just stick to that area of the USA, okay?"

"Sprunk? S-p-r-u-n-k?"

"How else would you spell Sprunk, Bernie?"

"Maybe he's French. Maybe it's with a q-u-e instead."

"Sprunque? That's not possible."

"Or German. Sprunch, with a hard ch."

"Sprunk," I said, "the easy way. South Dakota and environs."

"Just making sure," he said. "How's Eleanor?"

"Why does everybody ask me how Eleanor is? Why don't you just ask Eleanor?"

"I don't have her phone number." Bernie had once been sweet on Eleanor in an appealingly sublimated way. He had taught her everything there was to know about the Chicago School of Architecture while working up the nerve to ask her out. By the time I met her she knew all about the infrastructure of skyscrapers, but she'd still never had a date with Bernie.

"And I'm not going to give it to you, either. Anyway, you've got all these Sprunks to keep you busy."

"When do you need it?"

"Tomorrow. I'll call you."

"I'll be waiting. Breathlessly," he added, "with my entire life held in precarious abeyance." He hung up.

Dolly Miles, the woman I'd hired as Toby's new watchdog, answered Toby's phone. "So how is he?" I asked.

"He's been good all day. He's just lying around in the sun with an aluminum reflector around his neck. Says that way he won't have to wear makeup tomorrow. But my God, Simeon, does he use a lot of dope."

"Stay away from it," I said.

"Stick it where the sun don't shine," Dolly said. "He'd just try to make a pass at me if he thought I was loaded." Dolly weighed almost two hundred pounds, but there was no telling about Toby.

"Keep your legs together," I said, "and let me talk to him."

Dolly muttered something resentful and dropped the phone. After a moment, Toby picked it up. Today he was featuring bluff but hearty.

"Champ," he said, "come on out and get some sun."

"Toby, listen to me. If you get that girl loaded and she loses you, I'll blame you and not her. And if I do, I'm going to break your nose, understand?"

"Hey, we're all in this together."

"Yeah, but I don't know how many of the Toby's are on my side."

"All of us," Toby said. "Toby, Toby, and Toby. Jack, too. Anyway, I'm sure Norman told you not to hit me in the face."

"Just behave," I said. "Think about your residuals, and don't lose Dolly."

"Meaty, isn't she? In fact, I wish she'd watch me from closer up."

This time I hung up. I was writing his phone number on a yellow stick-it when I became aware that Wyl was standing at my shoulder.

"God in heaven," he said. "Is that Toby Vane's home phone?"

I put it on the wall, and he leaned forward in a nearsighted fashion to read it. "How strange," he said. "All the numbers are odd, not an even one among them. How often do you see that? I wonder what a numerologist would make of it."

"Wyl. You show it to anyone or sell it to anyone, even a numerologist, and I'll have three Sicilians drop in on you and bleach out your eye makeup."

"Oh,
please,"
Wyl said. "The Sicilians sound interesting, but don't you think I have any discretion? Don't you think I respect the stars? I know how they need their privacy."

I got up and headed for the door.

"My God," Wyl said behind me. "I didn't even ask Lee J. Cobb for his autograph."

11 - Eleanor

"Whoa," Eleanor said, not quite sarcastically enough. "Hold on. Are you telling me you know Toby Vane? Gee. Holy moly. Radical." At the mention of Toby's name, several diners glanced over at us.

"Wyl says hello. He's had his eyes tattooed."

"What, like Queequeg?" Eleanor chose her reading by weight; she never opened anything that weighed less than a pound. "What color?"

"Kohl black. That's kohl, with an H."

"As in Egypt," she said patiently. "If you have to make puns, I guess they might as well be archaeological." She closed her eyes and held up a hand. "Wait, wait. Listen. Have you ever heard a joke with a punch line like 'So
that's
why they call it the Windy City'? Somebody told it to me a couple of days ago, but I can't remember how it began." She looked wonderful, one of nature's very best pieces of work. Her beautiful, straight black hair hung blunt cut at her collarbone, curving in slightly toward her pale, slender throat. Some tendrils were much longer than others. The bangs were feathered.

"No," I said. "And that's a new haircut."

"It's not so much a haircut as a landscape. You should have seen Dickie do it, all grim determination and serious snipping. I'm sure the people who splice genes do it with a lighter heart. I forgot, you don't know Dickie, do you. What's he like?"

"Who, Dickie?" I asked unpleasantly.

She ignored me, a skill she'd had considerable opportunity to cultivate. "Of course not. Toby."

"Jesus," I said. "The people I see all day ask me about you. Then I see you, and you ask me about Toby."

"How come nobody ever asks you about you?" she said.

"My point exactly. I used to be interesting."

She looked around the restaurant. "You're still interesting," she said in the tone she would have used to calm a querulous four-year-old. A well-dressed, upwardly mobile young couple seated themselves gracefully at the table next to us. Something on the woman's wrist sparkled discreetly. The man smiled. He looked like a commercial for a credit dentist.

"If I'm so interesting, how come you're looking at them?"

The man glanced over at her, and his smile broadened. I wouldn't have thought it was possible. Its corners were already crowding his ears. Eleanor gave him the merest ghost of a smile, a dimpling at the corners of her mouth that was a specialty of hers, in return. "Good to know I haven't lost it completely," she said complacently.

"I think you've got another fifty years."

Eleanor put her chin on her hand and glowed at me. "You
are
interesting," she said. "Interest me some more. For instance, tell me about Toby Vane."

"Oh, apes and monkeys. Don't tell me you watch the show, too."

"It takes a lot of people to make a rating point. I'm not too proud to be one of them. Anyway, he's a hunk."

"A hunk of what is the question."

She picked up a fork. "Is this the right one?"

"For what? There isn't any food yet."

"I thought I might stick it through your tongue."

"That one's not on the table. Waiter." I raised my hand.

"I hope it's dull," she said.

"I could arrange for you to meet him. He likes bouncing Oriental women around."

"Ah," she said, looking with great interest at her left forearm. "Is there one of those on the horizon?"

"Yes," I said, kicking myself under the table. "Half of one, anyway." The waiter appeared at my shoulder. "Do you want anything else to drink?" I asked Eleanor.

"Another 7-Up."

"And a white wine for me," I said. The waiter beamed at Eleanor as though she'd ordered a magnum of Dom Pérignon, ignored me completely, and left.

"Is she pretty?" Eleanor said. "And don't ask me who."

"I suppose she is."

"You forgot to ask for the fork."

"So I did."

"What's her name?"

"She's got a lot of names."

"Not the best character reference, is it?"

"Eleanor, I'm not checking her out for a security clearance. She's a girl, that's all."

"Ten years old? Twelve?"

"All right, a young woman."

"How young? And what do you mean, half of one?"

"How's what's-his-name?" I said.

"Don't start," Eleanor said. "You know perfectly well what his name is."

The salad arrived in the nick of time. We both chewed. It seemed safer than talking. While she was using her bread to mop up the plate, I said, "So. You watch the show."

"Sure. Who doesn't?"

"I don't, for one. What's it about?"

"The usual bang-bang. Screeching tires and breaking glass, ladies in distress, dope dealers, and Central American dictators. The same guest stars as every other show on the air. Stupid dialogue. Lots of commercials telling us what we're missing in life."

"And you give it an hour of your time every week."

"It's
my
time," she observed. "And that Toby's really something."

"The premise," I said. "Swallow once or twice so you don't drool on your blouse and tell me the premise."

She looked down. "You gave me this blouse."

"I know." I'd felt a pang in my heart when I saw that she was wearing it. "It goes with your skirt," I said. I hadn't given her the skirt.

She glanced at the skirt. "His name, as you know perfectly well, is Bart." She sipped her 7-Up. "You really haven't seen it? Not even one show?"

"Not even the credits."

She pushed her salad plate to one side. "Well," she said, "it's not easy if you haven't seen it. It's like Toby's not really human."

"You're telling me."

"No, listen. He's a machine, and so is this big black car he drives. It sounds terrible, and I'm sure it is, but Toby gets his strength from the car. Neither of them can do much of anything if the other isn't around."

"Who?" I was getting confused.

"Toby and the car. It's like Hercules and Antaeus. Remember Antaeus?"

"Sure. He had to keep his feet on the ground. Hercules totaled him by lifting him first. A little like sumo wrestling."

"Well, that's like Toby in the show. In the car or around it, he's invincible. But get him away from it and he's just normal. And if you keep him away from it long enough, he begins to get very weak."

"Weak barely describes it." The waiter delivered the entrees with a flourish: lamb for me and something that was all vegetables for Eleanor.

"A lot of people watch it." She used her salad fork experimentally to pick up something long and green.

"A lot of people eat zucchini, too," I said. "That doesn't make it any good."

She chewed a minuscule amount. Eleanor believed in tiny bites, spaced far apart. Something to do with the digestive juices that she'd attempted to explain to me over a number of meals. It had taken months to make her understand that thinking about my digestive juices actually slowed their work.

"If
High Velocity
were a vegetable," she said a trifle maliciously, "it would be a zucchini. A long, racy, highly phallic zucchini with metallic pinstripes."

"That's very enlightening." My lamb tasted like plywood. It had to be me. The Black Forest Inn's lamb is good enough to make you feel that sheep are superfluous.

"So," Eleanor said, "who's the girl?"

I put down my utensils. "Is this why we're here? So you can conduct a pop quiz on my personal life?"

"You're the one who brought her up," Eleanor said. She exhaled slowly and laid down her fork. "No," she said. "We're here because I wanted to see you."

"A girl got killed," I said. "No, not that girl, another girl. She got beaten to death. And she was a friend of Toby's."

"Friend. That sounds like a euphemism. And what about the other one?"

"She's a euphemism, too. It's the career of the nineties. Professional euphemism. You can get a degree in it now."

"Dispensing with my jealousy for the moment, you're saying that you think Toby might be involved."

"I guess. I don't know. Do I look like I know? Toby's complicated."

"He's an actor," she said as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

"He's a white-knuckle sadist."

"Gosh," Eleanor said. She never swore. "And he looks so sweet."

"I wanted to see you, too," I said.

She waved it away. "Simeon, do you ever wonder whether this is a healthy profession?"

"You mean as in I could get killed?"

"As in you have to hang around with so much scum. You can't touch pitch without getting dirty, or something like that."

"It's not exactly like that."

"But you know what I mean, and anyway it's the Bible."

The waiter arrived. He laid a third 7-Up in front of Eleanor as if the glass containing it were the Holy Grail, plunked my white wine down with a blunt thud, and retired. Every table in the restaurant fell quiet, the way a room full of people will sometimes. Eleanor occupied the silence by lining up her silverware in more precisely parallel lines. They were already as parallel as a railroad track.

"I'll bet you were a champion at dodge ball in elementary school," she said. "Do you know how long we've known each other?"

"Eight years, seven months."

"And twelve days. And you still duck the issues."

"What's the issue?"

"See?"

"Swell. The issue of the moment is whether I can do my job without being corrupted. Maybe not. And then, maybe I'm corrupt already."

"We're all corrupt. That's the point we're supposed to work backward from."

"Eleanor, you sound like John Calvin."

"The average kid sees twelve thousand murders on TV by the time he's ten."

"He?"

"Or she." Eleanor shook her head impatiently. "If nits were a cash crop, you'd get rich picking them. Simeon, we're too old to waltz."

"And if that metaphor were any more mixed, it'd be an omelet. Cognac?"

"Oh, bull," she said, startling me. "I've never heard so much hot air."

"There we are," I said. "So
that's
why they call it the Windy City."

"Fine. Get some cognac. Get a whole bottle."

"What do you want from me, Eleanor? Somebody's dead."

"A lot of people are dead."

"Here," I said, holding out my bread plate. "Have a nit."

"Simeon." She put her hand on mine. "Why does it have to be you?"

"It doesn't. Somebody will do it, maybe. But I saw her." I gently bent Eleanor's index finger back. "All her fingers were broken. Three times."

"Maybe you think your fingers won't break," she said, giving mine a jerk upward. "Maybe you think you can't lose blood."

"We
are
talking about me getting killed?"

She knocked her precise silverware arrangement cockeyed. "You idiot," she said. "Of course we are."

"I love you, too." I reached over and straightened the two remaining forks. The upwardly mobile woman at the next table laughed tinnily.

"How come men can laugh boom-boom-boom and women sound like goats?" Eleanor said. "How come men can chew gum and women look like cows when they do it? How come it's okay for men to get wasted and throw up, but a drunk woman embarrasses everybody?"

"I love you, too," I said again.

"Maybe people have a higher expectation for women," she said, looking everywhere in the restaurant except at me. "What a pain in the rear."

I didn't say anything.

Eleanor lifted an edge of her plate and let it drop onto the immaculate white tablecloth. The delicate muscles of her jaw worked, once and then again. "What a total, unadulterated, one-hundred-percent pain in the
ass,"
she said.